


She is called Venus but I call her You

by language_escapes



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Drug Addiction, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-29
Updated: 2012-09-29
Packaged: 2017-11-15 07:09:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/language_escapes/pseuds/language_escapes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes thinks he sees redemption in her eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She is called Venus but I call her You

**Author's Note:**

> My entire life, I've sworn I would never write anything from Holmes' (any Holmes) POV. It was a promise. Whoops.
> 
> Thank you to uberniftacular for beta'ing, and sorry that I added a bunch of stuff after you did. All remaining errors and weirdness is totally mine. Title from Adrienne Rich's poem "Edgelit".
> 
> This fic comes from a mixture of everyone saying "I love the way he looks at her" and my own rambling meta at my tumblr.

He doesn’t have to be a genius to hear the bitterness in Ms. Watson’s voice when she explains that most of her clients just call her their companion.

It’s the way she says it, the sharp twist of her lips, the spasm of her right hand, the tilt of her head. _Companion_. The history of that word is written all over her. Companion. Girlfriend. Lover. She might as well just say whore.

Holmes doesn’t know this woman, and he certainly doesn’t want her around, but she isn’t his girlfriend, his lover, his whore. She may be paid to pretend to care about him, but he won’t make her pretend anything else. 

He holds his hand out to Gregson, his calluses familiar, changed little in the intervening years. His accent is heavier now that he’s in his own country, relaxed and at ease, no longer battling against the English accents in London. Holmes can hear the sirens occasionally chirping, the lights distracting and irritating. A mobile goes off. The crime scene is just beyond the yellow tape, police coming in and out of the front door. The stairs are worn, old, but kept up by a mindful landlord. It looks a bit like his own brownstone, actually, but better cared for, better loved. It looks like every other brownstone in New York, and not at all the same. This one has a dead body in it. This one will redeem him, rather than be used against him. 

He introduces Gregson to Ms. Watson, and sees the look of suspicion and confusion on Gregson’s face. He needs to explain who she is. Gregson knows perfectly well that Holmes is alone, has always been alone and always will be. He doesn’t work with other people. He can’t; they can’t keep up with him, which makes them useless, and they never really like him much, which makes them obnoxious. But here she is, standing next to him and smiling politely, like she has since she met him (and God, he wants to wipe that polite smile off her face, he hates that, he hates the fake looks, the veneer of friendliness; the doctors and nurses did that, they wanted him to feel as though he was welcome when he wasn’t, wanted to make him feel like he was all right, and he _wasn’t_ , and he doesn’t like it when people lie to him, and this disgusting kindness is just another lie; she wouldn’t be here if she weren’t being paid), and Gregson knows she doesn’t fit.

He needs to introduce her. He has wasted precious seconds, and he doesn’t know what to call her.

Not companion. She’s being paid, but not for that.

He says the first thing that comes to mind.

“This is Ms. Watson, my personal… valet.”

(When he was young, their valet was named Mr. Jones, and he would sneak him and Mycroft the occasional sweet. Father didn’t like him, though, said he was too familiar, and he was replaced by Ms. Miller, who never looked him in the eye but sneered at him in the rearview mirror. When he worked with Scotland Yard, he rarely had his own valet, too far removed from Father and Father’s money to require one, but he became quite familiar with the employees at the Tube.)

(Valets are familiar. The brain recognizes the familiar, reaches out for it when in turmoil.)

At least he got Ms. Watson to stop smiling, if only for a moment.

******  
Ms. Watson is astounding.

She can keep up with him. She can shut him down. She can get information that he needs. She forces him to stop. She makes all the noise stop, and that’s a miracle, because on the good days his head is too noisy, and _these are not good days_. But no, he thinks, that’s wrong, it isn’t a miracle that the noise stops - _she’s_ the miracle, and he wonders if she’s there to save him.

(She’s right, she’s all too right, but maybe maybe _maybe_ she’s the patron saint of lost causes.)

(But no, that’s Jude. And he is no soldier.)

(And she is not there to save him.)

******  
He sits in his cell and waits.

It’s rather the story of his life. The cell isn’t always a prison cell, isn’t always a rehab clinic, but there is always something keeping him locked in, locked down. And he’s always waiting for a way to escape. Sometimes he doesn’t wait, sometimes he climbs the walls, breaks the lock, claws his way through concrete and wood and people. But there are times like this, when he knows that he’s done it this time and broken something that can’t be fixed.

Holmes isn’t _stupid_. He understands people - he can take them apart by looking at them, and he’s a detective, he couldn’t do his job if he didn’t understand human emotion. People have called him cold and heartless and he’s wanted to hurt them, wanted to tear them to pieces, because there are days when there is too much emotion for him to handle all at once, and he’s _drowning_ , and rather than throw him a rope, they just stand and watch him sink below it all. He knows how people work, he knows how they think, he knows where the lines are.

He just… can’t, sometimes. He feels like he’s shaking apart, and he’s clinging to the edges of his life with the very tips of his fingers. Sometimes the effort to keep himself together takes all of his energy and he can’t pay attention to those lines. Sometimes he blunders over them, despite knowing where they are.

Joan’s car was old, and somewhat tattered, but clearly well cared for before he wrecked it. The steering wheel was worn in certain spots (she drives with her hands at ten and two), the radio on and quiet, just a bit of background noise, the glove compartment full of coupons and alcohol wipes, with napkins and tampons and receipts and the detritus of a life thrown together hastily, always on the move, always prepared for emergencies. Except for the glove compartment, the rest of the car is clean, stripped bare, with very little personality to it. It’s the glove compartment that gives her away.

That was her car, her life on the go, and he broke it. It’s a shame, really. He thought that maybe they could have been friends, someday. But that’s broken, too, just like everything else. 

(He doesn’t want to think about before the car. Doesn’t want to think about her face when he lost control and took her life apart like it was a game.)

(He doesn’t want to think about what she said.)

(He’s not the only one who can make deductions. She may not be a surgeon anymore, but she can still take people apart.)

He hears the buzz of the door, ignores it. He stares at his hands. They’re shaking. He would rather like them to stop.

When he does look up, she’s standing there, just looking at him.

Holmes is not stupid. He knows where the lines are, and he knows he crossed them in a sharp, terrible manner. But he knows what he needs to do. He walks over, picks up the phone, says something without thinking about it, trying to put together what he really wants to say in his head, trying to get the static out long enough to form something coherent and understandable.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She’s still standing there afterwards. There’s something like redemption in her eyes.

******  
She cracks the case.

Of course she does.

******  
He introduces her as his associate when confronting the doctor. It’s still not right, but it’s better than valet, better than companion. He wants to say, “my friend”; he wants to say “my partner”; but he knows those aren’t true either.

She’s agreed to stay on as his sober companion, but that just means she doesn’t find him so abhorrent that she needs to give up the job. She’s willing to stick it out the six weeks. 

(But she could still leave. One word wrong, one more blunder, one more fall and she could walk away, and no one would blame her. After all, he’s Sherlock Holmes, the addict, and who would want to stay for that?)

(You can’t pay people to be your friends. He’s tried.)

But he can at least call her his associate. It means they’re equals, and he so desperately wants to be her equal that he can taste it on his tongue.

******  
Watson insists on fixing up the brownstone.

“I don’t mind the honey dripping in from the roof,” she says, hands on her hips, “but I refuse to live in a place where I risk getting splinters whenever I touch the banister.”

He’s rubbish with a hammer, but it turns out she’s quite handy (“I did Habitat for Humanity for three years in college. And power tools are awesome.”), and before long the brownstone almost begins to resemble a home rather than a house.

He wants to think that this means she’ll stay on, that she’ll stay here and work with him when his paid six weeks are up, but he’s done deluding himself. He needs to be better, this time, and not let himself hope for things he can’t have.

There are only four weeks left.

******  
“I know you can’t help yourself,” Watson grouses, yanking off her rubber gloves and tossing them into the trash, “but couldn’t you try? You’ve got a good brain in there; I’d hate to see it splattered all over the sidewalk because your impulse control sucks.”

Holmes touches the stitches on his forehead tentatively. They’re perfectly even and neat. “You were a good surgeon,” he says without thinking. He immediately wants to reach out and pull the words back in, tuck them away in the dark corners of his brain, keep them hidden and safe. But he can’t, they’re out there now, and no, no, he can’t help himself, and she’s quite right, someday his brains will be all over the pavement and it will be his mouth that put them there. 

Watson turns to look at him, her mouth twisted into a bitter smirk. “The best,” she says simply, and the anger and fury are present, but muted, somehow. She lifts her chin, daring him to continue, daring him to push where he’s not welcome, to deduce whatever he wants from the way she holds her hands, from the way her spine is rigid.

He looks away, closes his eyes. He can still hear the ragged edge of her breath, can feel her waiting for him to fuck up again, but he forces himself to stop. She’s taught him that he can, and the world won’t end.

“Thank you,” he says instead. He touches the stitches one more time, wants to feel the evidence of her concern (bought, purchased, paid for, but still there), and then drops his hand into his lap, tired and sick and hurting.

Three weeks.

******  
“You need to stop this! You’re going to kill yourself at this rate!” Watson yells at him, and he throws his arms up, holds his head, because she can’t shout loud enough to block out the shouting in his head, and he really can’t abide one more voice in the cacophony. A little boy’s life depends on him solving this, on fixing it. And he can, he can do it, if he could just get everything else to _fucking stop_.

Watson reaches out, pulls his arms down, drags them, really, because he can feel himself shaking, he knows he’s bouncing, he needs to move and he can’t, not now, because he can see Billy’s face, can hear him scream, can see him clinging to the floor as desperately as he can, and he can see all that but he can’t see the face of his kidnapper, and he should, he should, he can-

“Holmes,” Watson says gently, and it cuts through all the noise and all the pictures and everything else rattling about in his head. “Look at me.”

If he looks at her, he’ll break into a thousand pieces.

“Holmes, shut up. Shut up. Look at me. Please.”

He doesn’t know if he’s actually saying anything out loud, or if his head has gotten loud enough for other people to hear, but it doesn’t matter, because Watson asked him to look at her. She said please. She isn’t just standing there, watching him drown. 

She’s tossed him a life preserver.

He looks at her.

The world doesn’t end.

******  
He knows that she’s angry. She wears it better than he does, doesn’t snap at the slightest provocation, doesn’t fly apart at a moment’s notice, but she’s still angry. It’s like a live wire underneath her skin, and there’s a part of him that wants to trip it, wants to see what happens when it’s sparked. But he doesn’t. He respects her too much, and he wants to keep some secrets between them. The lines change every day, but that one doesn’t.

(One week. Just one.)

He doesn’t know what happens, in the end, to crack open that anger. She’s a constant mystery to him, new things learned and new things hidden each day, and he can’t always read her right, but he gets home from the coroners’ and finds her sitting on the ground in the living room, right hand bleeding, left holding a beer.

(He doesn’t know what makes her angry, but he sees her purse in the entryway, tossed to the side, pens and hair ties and rubber gloves scattered across the floor. He sees the way the plaster is cracked, almost unnoticeable, where her hand must have hit it. He sees her mobile turned off and left on the stairs. He doesn’t know what started it, but he sees what happened after.)

He looks at her for a long moment, trying to figure it out, trying to solve her, but when he sees her face, he stops. She looks lost and broken, and he recognizes that face. He sees it every day, in the loo, when he brushes his teeth.

He walks over to her gingerly, not sure where the line is anymore. She doesn’t yell at him, though, doesn’t glare or snap or smirk or anything. She stares straight ahead at the television, watching the Mets lose yet another game. Her eyes are empty.

He pauses by the bookshelf, takes down one of their numerous first aid kits, and sits next to her. He presses his shoulder to hers, knowing that if he speaks he’ll ruin everything.

Instead, he takes her hand in his and gently, carefully, cleans away the blood.

They don’t speak. He doesn’t even say anything when her head tilts and lands on his shoulder. He lets it go, and watches the Mets lose with dignified silence.

******  
“I don’t get why you put up with him,” Watson’s friend (former friend, former colleague, he isn’t sure what she is exactly, except that she’s there and Watson is upset and distracted when she’s around, and he doesn’t like that, but Watson clearly wants this to be hers and hers alone, so he lets it be) says, and Holmes turns away quickly. He doesn’t want to hear her say, _he’s just a client_ or _I have to, I get paid for this_ or any of the other things she could say, can say, will say. He needs to focus on the patient.

“He’s my friend,” Watson says simply, and he jerks, nearly dropping his mobile. He manages to keep hold of it, takes a picture of the patient’s right thumb, tucks it away again.

He forces himself to make let his face go blank, reins in the twitches that he can’t seem to get rid of, and turns around.

“We need to find this woman’s sewing kit,” he says, his voice strangely empty in his own ears, and walks out of the room.

It seems he has a friend. For two more days, at least, and then she will return to her own life, and she’ll tell stories about that weird Sherlock Holmes person, about the addict she had to spend six weeks with, and she’ll laugh about it with her friends at the bar, and he’ll never see her again.

For the first time in three weeks, he desperately wants the drugs.

******  
“Where are we going?” Watson asks, following him out of their - his - brownstone. He ignores her, heading for the subway. They’re on a schedule, and if he stops to explain, they’ll be late, and they can’t be late, not for this, not for their last day together. He needs to give her this. He needs to give her something.

(He needs her, but he’ll never say that out loud.)

“Holmes, you’re acting weird,” she says behind him. “Well, weirder than normal,” she amends, and he still ignores her, darting down the stairs to the subway as fast as he can, hoping her heels will slow her down.

They don’t, of course, they never have. She’s by his side in an instant. “Hey. Stop. What’s going on?” she asks. Her face is open, trusting, and he feels so, so sick.

“It’s a surprise,” he says thickly, and keeps walking.

“Is it a good surprise?” she asks. “Because your surprises usually involve ears in boxes. But that would make you happy, and you look like you’re going to throw up.”

He just keeps walking. There is little else he can do.

Watson finally stops talking when they’re on the subway, the 7 train. They ride side by side, the hum of human life around them, and he allows himself to get lost in it. The girl in front of them has been cheating on her homework. The man three people away needs his insulin. There’s a woman humming somewhere, loudly and off key, but he can’t see her. The couple across from them will break up in two weeks, if that, from the way they’re sitting. He lets it wash over him, taking solace in the fact that this, at least, will never leave him.

They get off the subway in Queens, and they walk. He keeps his eyes forward.

“Holmes, where are we going?” Watson asks again.

“You’ll see,” he says, touching his pocket to make sure the tickets are still there.

“Because we’re coming up on Citi Park, and it’s going to get crowded. There’s a game today,” she explains.

“I know,” he says.

“You- you know? Holmes, you never watch baseball willingly. I have to blackmail you into it. Why would you…” she trails off, and he knows that she’s putting together the pieces, knows she put them together a while ago but wasn’t willing to accept her answer as correct, because it’s so unlike him, taking her to a game.

“Are we going to a Mets game?” she asks.

He sighs exaggeratedly. “You always ruin my surprises, Watson,” he says, and can’t help but smile when she squeals.

He can’t wait to tell her they’re right by first base. He’s been told those are good seats.

******  
The Mets lose, predictably enough, but it doesn’t seem to make Watson any less happy. She babbles the entire ride home about the game, talking statistics and batting stances and other things he really doesn’t care about. He watches her, though, and smiles, because she’s happy, and he did that. He did something right, for a change.

When they’re inside, he hangs up her coat, follows her into the kitchen and watches as she reaches into the refrigerator and pulls out a soda, catches the one she tosses to him, watches her kick off her shoes, watches watches _watches_ because tomorrow she’ll be gone, and it will just be him in this house, buying soda he never drinks before he remembers, automatically clicking to baseball that he doesn’t like, reaching for someone else’s coat before his own. He needs to memorize her before she goes.

His face twists, and he feels Watson’s eyes on him.

“Holmes, what? You’ve been acting strange all day, and I thought it was just because you wanted to surprise me with the game, but you’re still acting weird. What’s wrong?” she asks, like she doesn’t know. She hasn’t discussed how she’s going to move out, or when the movers will come, and he thought it was to protect his feelings, to make this all feel more natural, more normal and less like an addict sitter moving on, moving out, moving to her next client. He thought it was part of the transition, but now she’s acting like- like she _genuinely doesn’t know_. He blinks. 

“Ms. Watson,” he says roughly, his voice catching. He swallows and continues. “I just wanted to say… thank you, for what you’ve done in these past six weeks. I have- I have appreciated your work. It has been- memorable. And, and I am not ashamed to say that I will- I will miss your presence.”

He feels like he’s choking. He turns around quickly, because he can’t let her see his face right now. He can feel himself falling apart, and he can’t let her see. He’s done so much better, and he wants her to remember that. Because she’ll tell stories, and she’ll laugh, but maybe sometimes - just sometimes - she’ll remember that he was brilliant, and that he helped people, and he could be strong, too, in his weakness.

He looks down at his hands. They aren’t shaking. She did that.

“Are you kicking me out?” she asks after a long silence.

“Your six weeks are over, Ms. Watson,” he says. “My father’s contract with you has expired. You are free to do what you want.”

He hears the rustling of fabric behind him and the creak of the counter. He can see, in his mind’s eyes, her lifting herself up onto the counter effortlessly, her legs dangling down, long but not long enough to touch the ground. 

“Because if you kick me out,” Watson continues, as though he hasn’t said anything, “I’ll have nowhere to go. I broke my lease three weeks ago.” He breathes in sharply, but doesn’t say anything. “See, I quit being a sober companion, and couldn’t afford it anymore. My income is kind of spotty right now. I’m a partner in this new consulting detective business, and my pay depends on how many cases we have.”

He almost doesn’t dare, but in the end, he turns around and looks at her. She’s sitting on the counter, feet swinging in the air, a quiet smirk on her face.

“You- I didn’t realize,” he says softly.

Her smirk blooms into a grin. “Y’know, for a genius, you’re really a huge dumbass. How did you miss the _boxes and boxes of stuff_ I moved in three weeks ago?”

His lips twitch into a small smile. “I thought that was something sober companions did,” he admits. It’s ridiculous, now that he thinks about it. Sober companions are temporary; they wouldn’t move their entire life into their client’s home.

Watson rolls her eyes. “No, that’s something friends do. You know what else friends do? They help their new roommate unpack. Which you didn’t. Loser.”

He swallows, focusing on making his voice normal, his face blank. It’s harder than it ever has been before, but he can do it. He’s stronger now than he was before. “I believe I owe you dinner, then,” he says.

Watson hops off the counter. “I believe you do.”

She puts on her shoes, he helps her into her coat, and they take a taxi to the most expensive restaurant he can think of. They are seated at a table, and normally he would never presume, but he’s feeling daring tonight, so he turns to the waiter and says, “And a glass of the cabernet sauvignon for my friend here.”

He ignores Watson’s look and just listens to the words, tastes them, lets them be real. Because she stopped working for his father three weeks ago and she stayed and she’s his partner in this business and his friend, and he can have that, he’s allowed that, this _isn’t going away_. He needed to say it, just once. To test it. To try it. To make sure.

Watson doesn’t correct him. She says, “And that’s the last time you get away with ordering for me, Holmes.” But he can tell she knows what he was doing. She is forever a mystery to him. He learns something new every day, always surprised, always interested. But he was never a mystery to her. Not even for a moment. 

“Of course, Watson,” he demurs, and doesn’t bother to hide his smile.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] She is called Venus but I call her You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/953768) by [ArwenLune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/ArwenLune)




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